Marty Deeks is a complicated guy filled with contradictions and extremes. We only know the basics of his life before NCIS, but what we know isn’t a fairytale. He had an incredibly difficult childhood filled with trauma. How did that childhood influence the man he grew to become? This question has always intrigued me, so I set out to learn about childhood trauma and its effects on adult survivors.
Issue disclaimers re triggers / get help
This is not an article infused with happiness (although it does end pretty well for the hero of the story). I feel it necessary to issue a warning to anyone who might be triggered by discussions of child and spousal abuse and their aftermath. But before anyone stops reading, let me add that there are an astounding
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Also may be random choices by the writers and not really informed by any link to his childhood experiences.
We know very little about Deeks’ childhood
When I was 11 years old, my dad was…one drink away from killing my mom and me…
- Marty Deeks in “Plan B”
We know that Deeks’ dad drank to the point that he “was one drink away” from killing him and his mother. I’m taking that to mean that he was an alcoholic who regularly physically abused both of them. We know that when he was 11, he shot his dad who was wielding a shotgun against him and his mother. Deeks may have been arrested at the time, given that he had records “sealed in a juvie court,” but that in the end his relationship with his mother was much improved after his father was sent to prison.
Put childhood experiences into context- How bad was it?
No child should ever be forced to shoot his own father.
- Roberta Deeks to her son in “Internal Affairs”
Let’s try to put that kind of a childhood into some context. First of all, little Marty Brandel wasn’t the only abused child. An estimated 28% of all children in the U.S. experience some form of physical abuse, and a report of child abuse is made every 10 seconds. And little Marty was luckier than some: an estimated four American children die every day due to abuse and neglect. And one in three women will be the victim of intimate partner violence at some point in her life.